Poppies

Poppies and People

| Flower Roberts

I have strong feelings about these flowers.

IMG_5755

The seeds were a gift from an artist friend decades ago.

Bill Troutman  is no longer alive, but his poppies bloom each May to remind me of this wonderful man.

The blooms remind me of Bill, but the pods remind me of how people ruin things.

IMG_5775

Opium can now be produced synthetically, by-passing the poppy.

Some places still use this plant’s sap to produce the drug.

IMG_5778

Humans make the drug. Poppies are just plants.

They do what plants are supposed to do. Make flowers and seeds.

I love these poppies.

IMG_5782

Poppies don’t make opium, people do.

IMG_5774

Flower

 

Popping Poppies

| Flower Roberts

Every year when the poppies pop, I walk through them in awe.

IMG_0242

How could they be this red? …this beautiful?  …this perfectly made?

I hope I never lose the feeling I get when looking into a poppy bloom.

IMG_0227

They are marvelous. They are spectacular.

How can a tiny black speck grow into such magnificence?

IMG_0232

Let me add the lesson the poppies have taught me.

I have planted them various places in my gardens over the years,

but they thrive in a place that I would prefer that they not grow.

They love the edge of our vegetable garden.

IMG_0244

Mr. Flower has to plow around them.  We have to plant around them.

We let them stay here because we love them so much.

My saying for me has been “Grow where you are planted”.

Now that I have young adult children, my saying for them is,

“Plant yourself where you can grow”.

The poppies taught me this.

They thrive and bloom best where they plant themselves,

NOT where Mama Flower sowed their seeds.

IMG_0243

POP goes the FLOWER!

Seeds in Sand

| Flower Roberts

I am ashamed to admit that I usually don’t mix my small seeds with sand.

It can be seen on my hand how this mix would better space the seeds.

Poppy seeds are also tiny and tend to blow while sown.

img_8598

This leads to over-crowding and the need to thin seedlings.

img_0076

Sometimes I wait too late to thin, which disrupts the roots of the plants left.

Last week I mixed my poppy seeds with sand before sowing them.

img_8597

I liked that I could see where I had sown the seeds.

img_8599

Hopefully, this year’s poppies will be less crowded than last year’s crop.

If I have given you my red, double “Bill Troutman” poppy seeds; you need to sow them soon.   They are early risers.

img_0121

FLOWER